“I always ask authors who request my services to begin by considering how it is that their readers know what they know. Did they discover your latest title in a review? Wander into a reading or other event? Or, as is usually the case now, see a mention on some form of social media? When I work on a publicity campaign, I view my objective as twofold: to persuade someone to buy the author’s book—as opposed to all the other books competing for attention—and, more essentially, to speed up that sale and persuade her to do it now. In order to achieve this, an author needs that ever-elusive buzz. But what exactly is buzz, where does it come from, and how do you get it?”

// Marginal Utility

"The social-media companies have largely succeeded in persuading users of their platforms' neutrality. What we fail to see is that these new identities are no less contingent and dictated to us then the ones circumscribed by tradition; only now the constraints are imposed by for-profit companies in explicit service of gain.